Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Minnesota state agency helps Muslims buy foreclosed homes

It may be the worst of times for Minnesota residents who are pitched out of their homes, but it's the best of times for Muslims who want to move in.

Something called the New Markets Mortgage Program has been devised to create sharia-compliant mortgages. Says the report in the Bismark Tribune, "The program is targeted at low-to-moderate income families." Sound familiar?

Needless to say, the story is positioned as a heart warmer. Nawawi Sheikh and his wife or wives had been stymied in trying to get a home loan. Just like millions of other people at the moment, but in Sheikh's case, it was because the Western world's finance system didn't fit with his politico-religious system. So the state created a special deal for him and his fellow sharia-compliant Muslims.

The program is the brainchild of Hussein Samatar, director of the African Development Center in Minneapolis. "The process is different, but the outcome will look the same," Samatar said. "We wanted to be as conventional as possible, while respecting the tenets of Islam.

Samatar, who used to work for Wells Fargo, tried for years to launch Islamic financing. He said the fact that Minnesota Housing has agreed to participate is a nod to the Muslim community's growing economic power.

The loans are underwritten by Devon Bank in Chicago. Using taxpayer bailout money?

Devon is one of the largest Islamic lenders in the country. Corporate Counsel David Loundy said he expects the demand for Islamic financing to grow as more Muslims make their home in the U.S.

Loundy said Muslims tend to be good risks. "If they worked so hard to get to this country, they don't want to screw it up now that they are here, so they tend to pay their debts pretty promptly," said Loundy.

Worked so hard to get into this country? The United States government is practically begging immigrants to settle in America, especially if they're temporarily minorities, especially if they're Muslim, in its drive for population replacement.

Nawawi Sheikh's new three-bedroom south Minneapolis home is a former foreclosure. The African Development Center's Hussein Samatar said there are thousands more potential buyers like Sheikh out there. He said the New Markets Mortgage Program will help the Minnesota Muslims community put down strong roots.

"It is great news for the country, and it really sends a great signal that the United States is our country," he said.

For several months the FBI has been investigating about a dozen Somali-American men who disappeared from their homes in the Minneapolis area late last year and may have joined terrorist groups overseas. One of the men, 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed, later blew himself up in Somalia. The FBI recently called him the first U.S. citizen to carry out a suicide bombing, and FBI Director Mueller said he was "radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota."

Nawawi Sheikh, featured in the news story, is one of the beneficiaries of Minnesota's No Muslim Left Behind Act. He is a Somalian, excuse me, Somali-American. I do not say that he is a terrorist or that he has an explosive bone in his body. Who can know? They are always "moderate" Muslims until the day they become "extreme" Muslims. We can never sort them out in advance.

I do say it is insane to be inviting Somali Muslims to come live in this country.

We need no immigrants of any kind except a handful of those with some special expertise that cannot be duplicated by indigenous Americans. Beyond that, it is foolish to expect people from non-Western cultures who have a completely different set of values not to form enclaves and colonies of their own, contributing to a further fraying of the social fabric. Beyond that, we have to recognize that Islam is not "just another religion." It is a totalitarian worldview that allows for no alternatives except as a temporary expedient where it does not yet have the numbers to rule.

The government of Somalia has just voted to introduce sharia law. This is what Muslims do whenever and wherever they can. Why give them a foothold in the United States?

6 comments:

I had to read the article, because the term "African Development Center" jumped out at me. The article mentions it casually, as if everyone knew it. So I went to their website. From what I can see, it seems to be one of those private organizations with a lot of money, like the SPLC. But, who is funding this? Africans don't have any money. This sure looks like one of those Saudi money laundering shops, and I wouldn't be too shocked if some of the donations funded terrorism both here and in the M.E.

I have lived in the Twin Cities for many decades and I can tell you that in the last twenty years, and especially the last ten, it has been transformed by the incredible influx of Hmong, Mexicans, and Somalis, as well as blacks from Gary, IN and St. Louis. This was the home of "Minnesota Nice", where mild-mannered, friendly people of Scandinavian and German descent had nice clean politics, nice clean neighborhoods, and nice clean schools. Now it's just getting overrun. One neighborhood, Brooklyn Center, which was something like 95% white just a decade ago is now less than 50% white. And that's a suburb - the inner cities are becoming unrecognizable.

I read a blog comment recently by someone who witnessed a mob of several dozen Somali men and boys chasing a white teenage boy through one of the parks in Minneapolis. The boy was saved by a white man who intervened bravely, putting himself between the mob and the boy.

There's an analogy for this situation, where a group of really naive, isolated goodie-two-shoes welcomes into their community probably the most alien people on earth - Somalis - and then are overwhelmed and exploited by them. It puts me in mind of those lizards that lay their eggs in the nest of birds, whose eggs they destroy. The birds then sit on the lizard eggs til they hatch, and the baby lizards devour the birds.

But I'll say this. If diversity is going to destroy this country the way I think it is, then by God let it happen first in the most liberal places, the places that voted the politicians into office who brought this on us. Minneapolis, who recently elected the first black muslim to Congress, certainly deserves whatever they get when it comes to the "benefits" of "diversity".

Your little bit of Schadenfreude is understandable. Let the liberals experience the results of their immigration welcome wagon. But I suspect many of them still believe all problems created are worth it for the sake of diversity.

Olympus, where the abode of the gods stands firm and unmoving forever, they say, and is notshaken with windsnor spattered with rains,nor does snow pile ever there, but the shining bright airstretches cloudless away,and the white lightglances upon it.

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